Bring the Poll and not the Flag.

Even the most die-hard Blizzard fan is no longer under any illusion that Cataclysm has been the Grade A cluster-fuck of all time. Not up there with Sony and what they did to their Star Wars MMO, but still an awesome level of cluster-fuckedness nonetheless. Have you seen many WoW clones being released lately? Oh yeah, that other Star Wars game is on the way. That is going to be a level of epic fail not seen, well, since the last Star Wars MMO epic fail.

Blizzard has made bad choices in many different areas. The question now is whether they have the will, the courage, and the conviction to fix them in their next expansion. They might, or they just might leave their C team to carry on screwing it all up while their A team works on Titan and their B team makes love to Diablo 3 and Starcraft releases. Whatever the future holds, if there is one thing that they will have to drop like a red hot potato it is the following:

Remember good old Ghostcrawler and his ‘Bring the Player and not the class’? Well, I’m pretty sure now that they got it all wrong; it should read, ‘Bring the Class and not the Player’. This blog is called ‘The Noisy Rogue’, but it’s not about rogues any more. Even if I were still playing WoW it wouldn’t be about rogues. What’s the point? All the classes are effectively the same. Raid fights have been made into a barrage of dance steps that would leave even the most advanced all male ghetto dance groups on the X Factor shaking with fear. Whether you’re a hunter or a rogue or a mage in that situation, you’re all the same. Class abilities have been stripped back, scaled down, or just outright eliminated over the past two expansions.

If bringing a particular class doesn’t matter then no classes matter at all. And one of the most important interesting choices of an MMO is gone: which class shall I play? Because at the end of the day the class that you choose is a reflection of your personality. It is how you picture yourself, and what you associate with. By making classes homogeneous, Blizzard made players homogeneous as well. Gone are the days when someone says that another player is a really good rogue. Now they’re a really good dancer.

So many blogs were made with the blogger identifying themselves with a particular class. Do those bloggers that are still going even associate themselves with that original choice? Most bloggers that I read now, even if they were once only blogging about a single class, now blog about a wide range of general topics. After all, it’s hard to blog about essentially nothing.

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15 Responses to “Bring the Poll and not the Flag.”

Interesting thoughts. I agree with you in general, I been thinking about the t13 annouced set bonuses and what they mean for the T13 raid (arguments on my last blog if anyones acutally interested which I doubt) and I think its just lots of dancing about, no melee class gets alot of uptime and no ranged class stands still. Like heroic ragbaros its all take 3 steps left now back 5 steps now forward 4 steps. Why would you pay for online linedancing?

Never really understood the argument. Rogues and warriors and paladins and shaman don’t play alike. They still all have identity, flavor, unique abilities. I mean, when you say “Bring the Class and not the Player” that basically amounts to “Bring the shitty guy no wants to group with, because we have to. Oh, and sorry Bob, we’re full up on mages.”

Is that really what you want?

This isn’t some FPS or lobby game where you can just up and change your kit when you get bored. There are alts of course, but everything about WoW and MMOs in general still rewards funneling all your attention into a single character. There were serious class balance gyrations even before TBC that could send you from hot commodity to used condom in a matter of months… all based on a decision you made 4 years ago at the character select screen.

I didn’t sign up to be a plate healer, I signed up to be a paladin tank. Except, whoops, Blizzard never bothered to update the paladin blurb in TBC to state I would end up being a liability, a handicap for my guild outside of 5m heroics. I still remember progressing in Ulduar till Vezax, where it was basically impossible to tank it pre-nerf as a paladin, whereas DKs were godmode.

I’m glad “Bring the Class, not the player” is buried in history’s unmarked grave of discarded garbage design, to bastardize a phrase. Cataclysm is a horrible expansion, but it is not because of this.

“Bring the shitty guy no wants to group with, because we have to. Oh, and sorry Bob, we’re full up on mages.”
Good point, Blizzard should homogenize all the classes because some guilds are bad at recruiting good people. It’s a multi-player game. The actions of other players will affect us. Sometimes for the better. Or worse. That’s the tradeoff we make. If we don’t like it, there are a lot of amazing single-player games out there.

“serious class balance gyrations”
Those are balance problems, not philosophical problems. There can be poor balance or good balance whether the devs are going for the old approach or the new.

President Obama on the issue of class balance: “It’s not class warfare. It’s math.”

You’re right, it is a multiplayer game. A multiplayer game that has zero to do with you being good at your class, and everything to do with whether you won the class lottery this week from the character selection screen. A multiplayer game that encourages you to make friends with people that – whoops! – turns out you cannot actually group with in the endgame. At least, that was the game back in vanilla/TBC.

If you want to feel special based solely on class, go play Battlefield 2 or TF2. Otherwise, get that nonsense out of a genre that expects you to spend 5000 hours with the same character.

“Even the most die-hard Blizzard fan is no longer under any illusion that Cataclysm has been the Grade A cluster-fuck of all time.”

Wrong. They made a lot of mistakes with Cataclysm (just as they did with every expansion so far) but it’s worlds away from being a “cluster-fuck”. So, one down from your “everyone” count and I’m pretty sure there are others that think so, too – even, lo and behold, not “die-hard blizzard fans”.

Invoking these kind of generelizations is weakening your argument anyway. You’re basically saying, hey, I’m right because all think as I do! Wrong, you’re either right or wrong on the strength of your arguments.

I think the one thing i can be thankful of cataclysm is that it cured my WoW addiction…. Seriously though I just got sick of the badge and gear grind. At least I did level one last rogue though… *sigh* my first and favourite class.

Now onto SWTOR, i dont actually think it will fail. It isnt a game for WoW players but having played in beta I am more than confident Ill be playing it for a long while into the future. I have wanted more story and decision making in my MMO for sometime and boy does SWTOR deliver :)

I think that the motto for Cataclysm should be “Bring the cooldown, not the player.” People have become convinced that they need any number of cooldowns to survive and I don’t feel that they do. Without sounding like a grizzled, old-school veteran, we didn’t need a need a Spirit Link Totem to get past Kael’thas in Tempest Keep. We didn’t need a Barrier to get Mu’ru down in Sunwell. Didn’t have a Barrier for Archimonde? No problem!

That’s what people want. You don’t have to be particularly great at your class, but as long as you have that one thing that everyone thinks they need to get ahead – OR – if you can happen to bring TWO of them, because chaining Barriers is clearly a sign of talent, then you’re really on your way. Think about how many awful shamans got raid spots, simply because they had a Bloodlust. It’s like that, but on a larger scale now.

@Azuriel
Zero to do with being good? Sorry, but I’m not going to fall for that. I never saw a raid bring a bad player just to have another of a class. Skill still mattered. It’s not like everyone projected a class aura which filled the role automatically; they had to play. The closest thing to a “bring the class” fight was Garr in MC, which still required the warlocks to not be awful. So sure, maybe they took an unproven player, but that’s far different from saying skill didn’t matter.

I’m not sure who these people were who couldn’t find a raid or guild. Are you imagining them? Is this all second-hand? I never had problems with “all full on that class”. I did have problems with myself or other players not being good enough, but that had nothing to do with our class.

So sure, maybe they took an unproven player, but that’s far different from saying skill didn’t matter.

If someone’s class gets more consideration/is the deciding factor rather than their skill as a player, then skill doesn’t matter. By definition.

I’m not sure who these people were who couldn’t find a raid or guild. Are you imagining them? Is this all second-hand?

Our 10m Ulduar progression (srs bsns, I know) was stopped at Vezax for 2 months while I leveled up and geared a DK tank to replace myself (our OT was also a paladin). It was simply impossible for a paladin tank due the reliance on mana-hogging Consecration to keep aggro when the DPS was bursting with the buff, and throttling simply ran our healers OOM by the end. Something similar happened with Sarth 1D+ when it was current content (DK tanks had more than enough cooldowns to handle every spike in damage without outside cooldowns), although at that point we just gave up.

Have I otherwise ever been personally replaced because of class? No. But then again, I was the MT and raid leader and GM of the guild to begin with. Have I ever picked a player specifically because of their class when we had 12 people show up for a 10m raid? Yes… if we were doing progression. A player would have to be pretty damn epic to personally contribute more DPS than a missing buff to 10 players could over an 8 minute fight. None of my guild members were outright morons (else I wouldn’t have let them in), but I have taken the socially awkward guy no one likes talking to on Vent over a more personable (and skillful) person because the former filled a class buff hole.

“If someone’s class gets more consideration/is the deciding factor rather than their skill as a player, then skill doesn’t matter. By definition.”
Please never write a dictionary. “Let’s give this guy a try. Okay, turns out he’s terrible, let’s get someone else.” Class can act as a modifier without replacing skill.

“Nevermind all the stories you read on the forums.”
I agree, we should generally ignore the forums.

I still play a rogue but it’s more like supporting your local football team. I do it because I’ve always done it, a sense of loyalty rather than because they won the trophy/cup/shield this year.

But I agree with you Adam that it’s not any great distinction and today it wouldn’t really matter which melee class I chose they’re all much of a muchness.

I guess I’m lamenting the past (when we did win the cup) but unlike real life it is possible to bring those days back. Make the talents matter, make the classes unique again and cut out the overlap. But as you say, they have bigger fish to fry. WoW is just the dying cash cow until the new products make money so I don’t anticipate my wishes will come true any time soon if ever in WoW.